Adult Industry History
The human interest in sex is nothing new, but the internet has made it much easier to explore and exploit all the nuances of desire. The online porn industry makes billions of dollars in profits every year, but the big beneficiaries are the producers, not the women and men who perform sexual acts in front of the camera. Mia Khalifa was a porn actress for a brief period at the end of 2014. SHe gained worldwide fame when she appeared in a video of sexual content wearing an Islamic hijab (the scarf worn by some Muslim women to cover his head) that caused great controversy and caused him to receive threats from supporters of the self-styled Islamic State (IS). To what extent does pornography still dominate the internet? He currently has 16 million followers on Instagram and if his name is searched on Google, thousands of results appear. But Khalifa is not proud of its worldwide fame. After years of threats, he is now talking openly about his past. What does your story tell us about the porn industry and culture of the 21st century? This is what he told in an interview with Stephen Sackur on the BBC's Hard Talk program. Khalifa, who was born and raised in Lebanon in a Christian family, received death threats from suspected members of the Islamic State. In many ways, you are a very famous woman. But the origin of your fame lies in your brief participation in the porn industry. Is it hard for you to deal with that? Absolutely. After quitting, my Instagram account was hacked by EI supporters, who posted propaganda everywhere. So Instagram deleted it and I didn't make a new account until a year later, when I decided to accept my destiny as the infamous porn star and try to change the narrative. So I created an Instagram account again and tried, in the absence of a better term, to become an influencer. If you put your name on Google, countless links to videos appear. The words "porn star" appear immediately, is that something you will never overcome? I am trying to make it. I am not very friendly with Google and we are trying to change that. The first thing that appears is a site that I have no control over, but that from the beginning is written in the first person, as if it were mine. And on my Wikipedia it is published as my official website. And we have tried countless times to eliminate it, even through legal action, but the company does not listen. And we have made countless proposals. "Why I chose a career in pornography" You were taken by your parents as a child from Lebanon to the US, where you received your education. You are clearly intelligent, you went to the university in Texas, where you studied history. How did you get into the porn industry? I do not believe that low self-esteem discriminates against anyone. Does it matter if you come from a good family or if you come from a not-so-good environment? I struggled all my childhood with being overweight and never felt attractive or worthy of male attention. And suddenly, in my first year of college, I started losing a lot of weight by making small changes. And by the time I graduated, I was ready to make a difference. I felt very self-conscious about my breasts, because that was the first thing I lost when I lost almost 50 pounds (22.6 kg). Florida cities like Tampa and Miami have been attracting models, producers and talent scouts of the porn industry for years. So my biggest insecurity was my breasts, and I wanted to recover them. And once I did it (Khalifa underwent a cosmetic surgery operation), I began to attract all this attention from men and never got used to it. I felt that, unless I clung to that and did what was asked of me or what was expected of me, it would be insignificant. And after feeling what that validation and compliments was like, I didn't want that to end. You were a young graduate who wanted to find a job and a boy on the street told you he could work with you. He was sincere and said he was in the porn business. What made you feel attracted to this proposal? That was not how it happened. It wasn't "Hey, do you want to get into porn?" It was more a "You're beautiful, would you like to model a little? You know, you have a great body and I think you would be great at modeling." Things like that. And after I arrived at the studio, it was a very respectable place, a magnificent place in Miami, in Doral, Florida. It was clean. Everyone who worked there was friendly. All their cubicles were decorated with family photos. As if it were nothing doubtful or something that made me feel uncomfortable. The first time I entered was not the first time I filmed a porn movie. It was the second time. In the first one, it was more than signing the paperwork, etc.
